Monthly Archives: February 2017

The artists won their first Oscar trophies in the supporting categories, “marking the first time since the 2007 ceremony that more than one Black actor has won a competitive Academy Award on the same night,” writes Entertainment Weekly:

Mahershala Ali triumphed for his work in Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, while Davis nabbed her first Oscar for her co-starring turn as Rose Maxson in Denzel Washington’s August Wilson adaptation Fences — a role that won her a Tony Award in 2010.

Davis delivered an unforgettable speech. Watch the video above and here is a transcript from The Washington Post:

“You know, there is one place that all the people with the greatest potential are gathered and that’s the graveyard,” a teary-eyed Davis began. “People ask me all the time — what kind of stories do you want to tell, Viola? And I say exhume those bodies. Exhume those stories — the stories of the people who dreamed big and never saw those dreams to fruition, people who fell in love and lost.”

Sunday marks the fifth anniversary of Trayvon Martin‘s death. Five years after the unarmed teen was fatally shot in Sanford, data shows that life for young African-American men in Central Florida has gotten better in some aspects but have worsened in others, reports the Daytona Beach News-Journal.

Government data indicates that in Central Florida, life has improved for young black men in some ways but gotten worse in others since Martin was killed.

Their unemployment rate in Orange County is down 38 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and the rate at which they graduate from high school is up sharply in Orange, Seminole, Osceola, Lake, Volusia and Brevard counties, as it is for all students, according to the Florida Department of Education. The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity had no unemployment numbers for black men ages 15 to 25 in Seminole County in those years.

The number of black males ages 15 to 25 who are the victims of homicide in Central Florida has see-sawed since 2012, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. That year, Martin was one of 31. In 2015, the most recent year for which data is …read more

A Michigan judge was not having it with the nonsense in her courtroom.

According to WDIV ClickOnDetroit, on Thursday during the sentencing of Amanda Kosal, a 26-year-old woman who killed a couple in Redford Township while driving drunk, a few of her family members were laughing and smirking while the victims’ loved-ones read statements in court about their loss. This lack of empathy and public disruption set Judge Qiana Lillard all he way off.

“Not in courtroom 502. Not today and not any other day!” she stressed.

Yes, ma’am, your honor!

“It’s time for him to go. And I don’t know who he is, but whoever can sit here at a tragic moment like this and laugh and smile when somebody has lost a family member … in the entire time that Mr. Zirker’s sister was speaking that clown, and that’s what I am going to call him, a clown, was sitting there smiling and laughing. And you can go, too. Because if you don’t know how to act, you can go to jail. So leaver,” Lillard asserted in a video that has now gone viral.

She added: “Anybody that can sit there and laugh and smirk — take her, she’s …read more

CINCINNATI (AP) — An Ohio woman charged with stabbing and decapitating her 3-month-old daughter pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced Thursday to 15 years to life in prison.

Deasia Watkins, 22, pleaded guilty in the March 2015 death of Jayniah Watkins. She told a Hamilton County judge that she loved her daughter very much.

Watkins previously had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to an aggravated murder charge. She was ordered to have psychiatric treatment and later found competent to stand trial.

Court records say she had been diagnosed with postpartum psychosis, and her attorney, Norm Aubin, said Thursday evening that she is taking medication for the condition.

“Nobody is arguing that she was not mentally ill — everybody agrees she was,” Aubin said. “It’s just whether she knew at the time it was going on, that it was wrong. This case is tragic.”

Aubin said Watkins is still mentally ill, but in remission.

Police responding to a 911 call on March 16, 2015, found the decapitated infant on the kitchen counter in the home of an aunt who was temporarily caring for the child. The baby had been stabbed several times with a large chef’s knife, authorities said. She also had a fractured …read more

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Black people who celebrate the civil rights movement and white people who commemorate the Civil War are suddenly finding themselves fighting on the same side in historic Selma, Alabama: against City Hall.

Both groups say the city is squeezing them with demands for thousands of dollars in up-front payments to stage annual events that bring tens of thousands of visitors to an otherwise sleepy community where unemployment is high and boarded-up homes and businesses are a common sight.

Plans for next month’s Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee, which commemorates the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march of 1965, are up in the air over the city’s demand. And the re-enactment of the 1865 Battle of Selma, involving hundreds of history buffs in Civil War garb, has been canceled because organizers couldn’t afford the tab.

The jubilee draws mostly blacks, the battle re-enactment mostly whites. So now, two groups with different interests and membership rosters are united in being upset with Mayor Darrio Melton and other leaders who say the city can’t afford the police overtime, fire protection and cleanup the events require.

For a change in Selma, where race sometimes seems like a factor in everything, something isn’t solely black and white.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department will step up enforcement of federal law against recreational marijuana, White House spokesmanSean Spicer said Thursday, offering the Trump administration’s strongest indication to date of a looming crackdown on the drug, even as a solid majority of Americans believe it should be legal.

“I do believe you’ll see greater enforcement of it,” Spicer said in response to a question during a news conference. But he offered no details about what such enforcement would entail. President Donald Trump does not oppose medical marijuana, he added, but “that’s very different than recreational use, which is something the Department of Justice will be further looking into.”

A renewed focus on recreational marijuana in states that have legalized pot would present a departure from the Trump administration’s statements in favor of states’ rights. A day earlier, the administration announced that the issue of transgender student bathroom access was best left to states and local communities to decide.

Enforcement would also shift away from marijuana policy under the Obama administration, which said in a 2013 memo that it would not intervene in state’s marijuana laws as long as they keep the drug from crossing state lines and away from children …read more

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Jeff Sessions signaled Thursday his strong support for the federal government’s continued use of private prisons, reversing an Obama administration directive to phase out their use. Stock prices of major private prison companies rose at the news.

Sessions issued a memo replacing one issued last August by Sally Yates, the deputy attorney general at the time.

That memo, which followed a harshly critical government audit of privately run prisons, directed the federal Bureau of Prisons to begin reducing and ultimately end its reliance on contract facilities. Yates, in her announcement, said private facilities have more safety and security problems than government-run ones and were less necessary given declines in the overall federal prison population.

But Sessions, in his memo, said Yates’ directive went against longstanding Justice Department policy and practice and “impaired the Bureau’s ability to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system.” He said he was directing the BOP to “return to its previous approach.”

The federal prison population — now just under 190,000 — has been dropping due in part to changes in federal sentencing policies over the last few years. Private prisons now hold about 21,000 inmates in 12 facilities, a fraction of …read more

In the days leading up to Bree Newsome‘s Wednesday night speech at the College of Charleston, protesters pitched Confederate flags atop a nearby parking garage, in defiance of her visit.

Demonstrators, both in opposition and support of Newsome, came to a boiling point moments before the event began, just steps away from the event. A Black man, later identified as 31-year-old Muhiyidin d’Baha, made headlines after he defied gravity to jump over a barricade to knock down a Confederate flag.

Newsome, 31, grew up in the South and knows the flag very well. The photo of her scaling the flag pole to snatch down the controversial banner from its residence directly in front of the South Carolina state capitol building in the dead of summer, branded an iconic image into recent history.

In the days leading up to Bree Newsome‘s Wednesday night speech at the College of Charleston, protesters pitched Confederate flags atop a nearby parking garage to oppose her visit.

Demonstrators, both in opposition and support of Newsome, came to a boiling point moments before the event began, just steps away from the event. A Black man, later identified as 31-year-old Muhiyidin d’Baha, made headlines after he appeared to defy gravity as he jumped over a barricade to snatch down a Confederate flag.

Newsome, 31, grew up in the south and knows the flag very well. The photo of her scaling the flag pole outside of the South Carolina state capitol building while she snatched the controversial banner from its residence in the scorching summer heat, branded an iconic image into recent history.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Because he had to leave his day job late, the pastor of a South Carolina church canceled his weekly Bible study class. That move may have averted a second round of deadly shootings after nine worshippers had been killed at another black church.

According to federal court documents unsealed Tuesday, Dylann Roof, who was convicted of killing the nine worshippers during Bible study at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, exited an interstate and drove approximately 30 miles northwest toward the Branch AME Church in Summerville, where another Bible study was advertised on a church sign. That was based on GPS evidence, and prosecutors said Roof shut off his GPS device, which they said indicated he stopped the car.

But Branch AME pastor the Rev. Rufus Berry told The Associated Press he called off Bible study that night because he was going to be late leaving his job at a cement company. He said he was shocked when he learned through news reports that his church, which has 70 members, had been targeted by Roof.

“I’m still trying to digest this. I’m trying to get through it,” Berry said Wednesday, moments before heading to the very Bible study class …read more